Complicated: Upgrading to CiviCRM 4.5.5 for Drupal 7.x

[Kebz]

Since CiviCRM is a module within Drupal... WHY can't it be a simple upgrade from within my Drupal site??

I am following the instructions as noted from this link http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Upgrade+Drupal+Sites+to+4.5+-+Drupal+7#UpgradeDrupalSitesto4.5-Drupal7-Step-by-stepUpgradeProcedures

I've done everything so far up to here > 8. Unpack the latest package and verify permissions

Now I'm at > 9. Update the civicrm.settings.php file
Create a "dummy" database and install CiviCRM fresh into that.  ..... OR edit the new civicrm.settings.php to point to your real database.

I looked inside /sites/default for the file... and the date and time for it says "12/7/2017 3:25pm"

Is that current?  Because that is the same file I have inside my local directory.

Did I miss something?  I don't see anywhere in the documentation to delete the CiviCRM files inside the "/sites/default" location 

Isn't there an easier way?  I upgrade Drupal core all of the time and it is not this difficult at all.

Someone please provide a better step by step upgrade instructions... please

[Coleman Watts]

there is a drush command that basically does the whole upgrade for you, all you have to do is download the new tarball and drush will do the rest

[Kebz]

Thank you Lobo (your name?) ... lol 

Do you have a link for how to "Drush"?

Also, I uninstall completely for now and re-install later and CiviCRM will play nicely with Drupal?  I have to get my site up and running ASAP and I'm running into too many errors, warning, and headachy issues... LOL

[kenahoo]

The drush command (which is drush civicrm-upgrade --tarfile ~/Downloads/civicrm-4.5.5-drupal.gz, by the way) is no panacea.  I'm trying to upgrade from 4.4.11 to 4.5.5, and the following happens:

1) drush can't actually unpack the tarball, presumably because it ends with just .gz instead of .tar.gz or .tgz, I guess.  So it fails after steps 1 & 2 of the upgrade process ("require_once(CRM/Core/Config.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory civicrm.drush.inc:509").  I have to go into sites/all/modules/ and extract the files manually (tar -xzvf ~/Downloads/civicrm-4.5.5-drupal.gz), then run drush civicrm-upgrade-db manually.

2) After getting the files & database (seemingly) upgraded, my site is actually broken, every Drupal page just shows the error "Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class DB_Error in /Users/ken/Documents/SIA/site-upgrade/sites/all/modules/civicrm/packages/DB.php on line 983" .  I've had this error or a similar one before on previous upgrades, but the fix seems to be different every time, and I've yet to figure out how to solve it this time.

So yeah, Kebz, I agree, this process always feels way more painful than upgrading other Drupal modules or the Drupal core itself.

[minhchauinc]

I installed with drupal and delete the cache , but it does not work and the error erros 500

[Hershel]

Kebz, CiviCRM is far more complicated than other Drupal modules and so, unfortunately, the upgrade process is also more complicated.

Regarding your "errors, warning, and headachy issues" you can post those in other forum threads and perhaps we can help you there.

minhchauinc, what do you mean exactly that "it does not work?" And if you get a 500 error, can you see the error message in the server logs?